Lone Survivor

by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

  “Even if he is gone for now, he could return any time he thinks the heat is off. I’ve made up my mind. I’m going back to Belize as soon as I’m assured of Kyle’s safety.”

  “Don’t you dare walk away without truly talking this out.”

  “What’s to discuss?”

  “I get out of the hospital tomorrow. Give me that long. Promise you’ll be here when I’m released.”

  Karissa let out a long sigh. She shouldn’t give in. She really shouldn’t. But she knew she would. Slowly, she nodded, and the slightest of smiles lightened the dark expression on his face.

  When she’d first set eyes on Hunter, she’d been more than half-afraid of his rough and uncivilized appearance. He was big and he was tough and he was brave, a real terror in a fight. He may have come by some of that scrappiness from growing up in the meanest area of Portland, the kind of young man with whom her father would never have allowed her to associate. Somehow that thought made him more attractive to her than ever. But beneath the surface of all the toughness, he was kind, tenderhearted, gentle to the weak and vulnerable, and the most chivalrous man she’d ever known—all contributors to the desperate love she was developing for him. All the more reason to cut ties with him as soon as possible. Her heart was going to take enough damage from this unfulfilled non-relationship as it was.

  Yes, walking away was definitely the right decision. If she could bring herself to do it.

  * * *

  Hunter fastened the bottom button on his shirt and cast his gaze around for his shoes. He glanced toward the door of his hospital room. Where was Karissa? She’d promised to be here when he was discharged. He scowled as he located and then put on his shoes.

  If that woman thought he was going to let her sudden attack of conscience-driven cold shoulder make him back off, she had another think coming. Of course, he’d bow out in a heartbeat if her retreat from him was due to her genuinely not wanting him around, but he had no doubt she felt their connection and the possibility for enduring love between them. She’d admitted as much in that theater room when the house was burning down around them. He wasn’t about to let go of something so precious because of a sick man’s threat, and he certainly wasn’t going to abandon the woman he loved before she was 100% safe from attack. A thousand of Siebender’s ilk could be after her, but she’d still be stuck with him. In fact, all the more reason to stay close.

  A knock at the door froze the air in his lungs. Karissa stepped inside, and the oxygen escaped his chest with a whoosh.

  “You came.”

  She tilted her head, brows lifted. “I don’t break promises. At least, not if I can help it.”

  “All quiet for you last night at your apartment?”

  “It was. The unmarked police car sat on my street all night long. I felt sorry for the officers assigned to such a boring stakeout.”

  “In this case, boring is good.”

  “Agreed, but one quiet night doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to change my mind and keep me here. As soon as I’m assured about Kyle’s safety, I’m gone. I’m a potential danger to anyone I care about.”

  Hunter grinned. “I guess that means you care about me.”

  “Don’t get cocky.” She sent him a mock frown.

  Hunter crossed the room and touched her arm. “I’m concerned for Kyle, too, and I’m not going to stop looking for him until he’s found.”

  “I appreciate that.” She offered a weak smile.

  Hunter’s heart twisted. He’d do anything to bring the light back into her eyes.

  “Why don’t you let me take you to lunch, and we’ll talk about strategies to find him.”

  She shrugged. “I guess that’s the best thing we can do at the moment.”

  Wordlessly, they walked down the hall together and entered the elevator. Hunter pressed the button for the ground floor. The car started downward then suddenly lurched to a stop. Hunter jammed his finger several times on the ground-floor button, but the car began moving upward instead of down.

  Karissa gasped. “Someone has assumed control of this elevator.”

  “Any guess as to who?” The angry-toned words flew from Hunter’s lips.

  So frustrating to be caught flat-footed with no weapon whatsoever. Well, except for their wits. They needed to think fast. Hunter’s cell phone had been lost at the skate park, and Karissa’s had been left at the wealthy friend’s house where Hunter had foolishly believed Karissa was safe.

  “You haven’t by any chance retrieved or replaced your cell phone since yesterday?” he asked her.

  “Sorry, no. I was planning on doing that today.”

  Hunter clenched his jaw. He tried the emergency-stop button on the interior service panel, but as he’d suspected, the elevator unhesitatingly continued carrying them upward. Their panel was clearly being overridden by someone tech-savvy who had all the control as to where this elevator car stopped. They were literally being delivered to their adversary in a box.

  “When we stop,” he told Karissa, “get behind me as we crowd to one side behind the service panel.”

  “You’ve got to stop protecting me. It’s me this guy wants.”

  “I think I’ve caused him enough grief that I’m fully in his sights, too. If he’s got Kyle, we’re going to get him back, and I’m not giving you up in the process. You want the little guy to have a loving mother to belong to, right?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “Then let’s do what we can to make that happen. Siebender’s tried multiple times and failed to take our lives. Let’s keep that score going.”

  Hunter infused his words with a jaunty tone, but his gut was wound in knots. Other than offering himself as a human shield that would unfortunately fail as soon as he was shot down, he had no clue what strategy to employ next. He was operating on a wing and a prayer. What else was new?

  The elevator reached the top level and the door dinged and folded slowly open to reveal...an empty hallway in an area that looked to be under renovation. Hunter blinked to discover no gun barrel staring them down.

  “Don’t stand there gawking.” A familiar voice spoke through an intercom system. “Come meet me on the roof. Let’s end this one way or another. Oh, and don’t bother looking for someone to help you or try to locate a landline phone. This floor is temporarily closed and utterly vacant. The stairwell to the roof is on your left.”

  With one arm, Hunter pressed Karissa behind him as he peered out of the elevator into the hallway. A door to his immediate left was labeled Stairs. What was to stop them from scurrying downward rather than up? He found out as soon as he led Karissa through the door.

  A rectangular object was stuck to the wall above the landing where the steps went down. Hunter’s stomach clenched. A homemade Semtex-based bomb. His firefighter training hadn’t included the knowledge of how to defuse them, but he’d been trained to know one when he saw one. If Karissa and he attempted to take the stairs down, he had no doubt that a sensor would set off the bomb. Upward was the only direction available.

  Every nerve ending tensed, Hunter hugged the wall as he ascended, and Karissa followed his lead. Her face had gone pale and fear filled her wide, expressive green eyes. Hadn’t she been through enough already? A tight fist formed in his chest. Siebender was right. It was time to end this.

  A metal door at the top of the stairs led them out onto a flat, tar-and-gravel roof. Hunter’s gaze darted over the environment, searching for threats. Again, no one and nothing.

  Then a portly figure stepped out from behind a chimney, grinning like the fiend he was. Siebender carried a gun, but it wasn’t pointed at them, just hanging down at his side like a casual afterthought. Hunter wasn’t fooled. If he charged the man, the gun would come up and Hunter would be dead before he could reach his quarry.

  “This way.” Siebender motioned them toward the low parapet at t
he edge of the roof.

  Keeping himself between Karissa and their enemy, Hunter held her arm as they complied. Siebender moved with them but remained several yards distant. They arrived at the parapet then the gun came up, pointed squarely at Hunter’s chest.

  “Now, my dear Karissa Landon,” the man said, “you are going to jump while your friend watches.”

  “Why would I do that?” Karissa stepped up beside Hunter.

  He resisted the urge to push her back behind him. The steel in her eyes said she wouldn’t go. He contented himself with wrapping a hand around her arm.

  Siebender smirked. “To save Kyle’s life.”

  “You may have killed him already,” Hunter burst out.

  “No, I assure you the child is fine and healthy. In fact, he’s sitting right over there.”

  The man motioned with his gun toward the shadow of a vent stack. A tiny figure lay still and quiet in his car seat. Karissa gasped and broke free of Hunter, but he lunged and caught her around the waist before she could escape his reach. He pulled her shaking body close to him.

  “Most wise,” Siebender said in sync with the click of his gun chambering a round. “The baby is only sleeping, but with any further attempt to dart away I will simply shoot you both. If you don’t comply and jump, Ms. Landon, I will ensure that the baby doesn’t leave this roof alive.”

  “You’ve promised before to spare him if I cooperated,” Karissa said, “and every time you attempted to break that promise. At my old home, you would have killed him, too, if your wife hadn’t stopped you.”

  The man’s face darkened. “You have yet to truly cooperate. This would-be hero always tags along against my instructions.” Siebender waved his gun toward Hunter. “Now, what will it be, Karissa? Kyle’s life or yours?”

  “What about Hunter?”

  “I’m dead either way,” Hunter said.

  “The man speaks the truth.” Siebender nodded. “I can kill him first and then throw you over the parapet. But then I will do away with the child, as well, because you were stubborn. However, since my wife is no longer in a position to raise him, your compliance ensures that I will quietly sell Kyle to a lovely family who is desperate to adopt. Besides, it will be so much more poetic for me if you throw yourself over—with the side benefit for you that you won’t have to watch your boyfriend die.”

  Karissa’s gaze met Hunter’s. All fear had vanished from her luminescent eyes. Only quiet determination remained. He sent her an infinitesimal shake of the head. She responded with the tiniest nod. Hunter’s insides went hollow. The woman was actually going to do it.

  “I’m not afraid of death,” she said as she stepped toward the low parapet.

  For an eternal moment, her chosen route placed her between Hunter and their cruel adversary. Hunter moved with his firefighter quickness and snatched up a handful of the gravel roofing. Even as Karissa reached the edge of the parapet with Siebender’s gaze reflexively following his hated quarry, Hunter flung the gravel into the man’s face. Siebender staggered backward, gun discharging. The bullet buzzed past Hunter’s ear as he launched himself at the portly criminal.

  The pair of them landed hard on the gravel-coated tar, struggling for control of the gun. The older man was surprisingly strong, but youth and size were on Hunter’s side. He gripped Siebender’s wrist and slammed the man’s hand repeatedly on the ground. The man suddenly lost his grip on the weapon. Hunter hopped off his adversary and snatched up the gun then whirled to train it on him.

  Siebender was already in motion, charging toward Karissa, who stood, wide-eyed, next to the parapet. Hunter fired and Siebender jerked but still managed to barrel into Karissa. Screaming, the pair of them went over the edge.

  “No!” Hunter wailed, racing to the parapet.

  With one set of fingers, Karissa maintained a tenuous grip on the cement lip while the rest of her dangled in thin air seven floors above the ground. Flinging aside the gun, Hunter grabbed her upper arm in both hands even as she lost her hold.

  “I’ve got you, sweetheart.” He managed to squeeze the words through his tight throat.

  Seconds later, he pulled her to safety, and she flung herself into his arms. For a long moment suspended in time, they simply stood and clung to one another. Hunter’s heart sang praise to God. Karissa, and also Kyle, were finally and truly safe. He’d seen their tormentor land like a rag doll in the flower bed far below. The man would never hurt anyone again.

  “It’s over.” She sobbed into his chest. “It’s really over now.”

  “Yes, it is,” Hunter confirmed, stroking her vivid hair, reveling in the feel of her safe and sound and with him. Where she belonged. “You don’t have to leave the country now to keep anyone safe.”

  Karissa pulled gently away from him and gazed into his eyes. “Do you want me to stay?”

  “Of course! More than anything. I want us to find out what we could have together.”

  “What about Kyle? I mean to adopt him if the courts will agree. Are you okay with a girlfriend that comes with a child?”

  “You know it! I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He grasped her hands in his. “And I’m not looking for a girlfriend. I’m after something way more permanent than that.”

  One side of her mouth quirked slightly upward, and her eyes lit just as he had hoped they would do. “Do you care to expand on that thought, Mr. Raines?”

  Slowly, he sank down onto one knee, her hands still in his and holding her gaze with his own. “Karissa Landon, I love you with all of my heart. There is nothing I want more than to become your husband and a father to Kyle...if you’ll have me.”

  Karissa let out a loud squeal, dropped onto her knees in front of him and threw her arms around his neck. The wonderful, fresh scent of her hair filled his nostrils.

  “Yes, oh, yes!” she cried out in his ear then drew away slightly. Her gaze flew upward. “Thank you, God, for giving this orphan a new family.”

  “Amen!” Hunter responded, helping her to her feet. “I’m not an orphan, so I can hardly wait to introduce you to my parents and my brother, but my heart has always yearned to start a family of my own. How about that? We are each other’s answer to prayer.”

  If his heart were any more full of joy that shoved the recent terror into the pale, he’d probably float away. A sudden infant squawk anchored his feet back to the earth. He had special responsibilities now.

  “Kyle,” he and Karissa said in unison.

  Hand in hand, they walked to where the infant lay in his car seat, kicking and gazing up at them with trusting eyes. Kneeling beside the little guy, Hunter reached out a hand to stroke the baby’s soft cheek. Kyle turned his head toward the touch, making sucking motions with his little mouth.

  “Hungry,” Karissa said.

  “Again,” added Hunter.

  They smiled at each other.

  Hunter pulled Karissa close, and their lips met in a long, tender kiss.

  EPILOGUE

  Nine months later

  “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Kyle,” sang the company assembled around the kitchen table in Hunter and Karissa’s Portland home. “Happy birthday to you!”

  The healthy one-year-old chortled and smacked his little palms repeatedly on the tray of his high chair.

  “Our little guy loves music, doesn’t he?” She gazed up at Hunter seated next to her.

  They’d been married for four months now, and Kyle was officially adopted as their son. Karissa gazed from Kyle to Hunter and back again, heart expanding fit to burst. How she loved these two men in her life. She was well and truly blessed.

  Hunter had never completely deleted his beard, but it was short and neatly trimmed, emphasizing his strong jaw. However, his thick brown hair had been cut to within a couple inches of his scalp. The burn scars on the side of his face were continui
ng to fade, but she hoped they would never entirely disappear. As far as she was concerned, they were badges of honor.

  Hunter met her loving gaze with one of his own and laughed. “I think he’s even got rhythm.”

  Smiling, Karissa wrapped an arm around her husband’s strong bicep. Everything about him still gave her that sense of comfort and safety that had helped carry her through so much anguish and danger. She thanked God every day for bringing them together and preserving their lives—especially Kyle’s.

  As she began to serve everyone slices of cake and conversational banter turned lively, her gaze traveled from one to another of the beloved friends and family who had come to celebrate Kyle’s first birthday with them. Of course, there was Buck and his wife, Starla, as well as Jace, Hunter’s park-ranger brother, and his lovely fiancée, a police dog handler he’d met during the false alarm at the hydroelectric station those many months ago. Then there were Hunter’s parents, a charming and gracious couple who had welcomed her into their family with open arms. Next to them were two of Hunter’s best buddies and their wives from the Portland Fire Department, where he now worked as an arson and fire investigator well on his way toward achieving his goal of becoming a fire marshal. And lastly two of her best friends and their families from where she volunteered at the Portland Rescue Mission. What could she say? mission work was in her blood.

  She’d also been attending counseling, sometimes with Hunter, but mostly one-on-one to work healthily through her grief issues. However, primarily during these past months she’d stayed home with Kyle, bonding with him and doing her best to be the mommy he deserved. Frankly, he seemed to have emerged from their terrible trial at the hands of Marshall Siebender and his wife with the least trauma of anyone. She thanked God every day for that mercy. Today, his green eyes sparkled, his complexion glowed peaches and cream, and with happy squeals he dug his little fingers into the cake laid upon his high-chair tray.